"It's not," Renée said. Her voice came out rough. She cleared her throat. "You can always tell me anything, Ivy. Anything. Always. Even if somebody tells you it's a secret. Even if it's Daddy. Even if it's me. Okay? There's no such thing as a not-bothering-Mommy secret. Not ever."
"Okay." Ivy was quiet for a moment. "Is Daddy in trouble?"
Renée looked at her daughter for a long time. She thought of all the things she could say, and all the things she should not say, and all the things she did not yet know.
"Daddy and I need to talk," she said finally. "That's all. Grown-ups have to talk sometimes. It's not anything you did. You hear me? Nothing you did."
"I wasn't supposed to open the bag."
"You thought it was a costume. That's not a crime." She bent down and kissed Ivy's forehead, right at the hairline, where the skin was warm and smelled like the coconut shampoo they used on her curls. "Go to sleep, Christmas movie star."
"Mommy?"
"Yes."
"Can I still be in the pageant? As a shepherd?"
"You can still be in the pageant as a shepherd."
She turned off the lamp. Orion glowed faintly green above the bed. She picked up the cardigan and the shoe and the bracelet from the dresser and stood for a moment in the doorway, listening to her daughter's breathing slow, and then she went back down the hall, and down the stairs, and the third step creaked, and Matt, at the bottom, looked up.